It is a well-known fact that, for myriad reasons, people suffer injuries and pain to their hand(s) and/or wrist(s). Many of these injuries occur through accidents, over-extension of those muscles/joints/tendons (MJT) located within the hand or wrist, or simply through degeneration of those MJT. Regardless the source, most people treat or rehabilitate those injuries. To treat the pain and rehabilitate those injuries of the wrist and hand, many people employ the use of braces, splints, or casts. These braces, splints, and casts provide protection to the injured area, reduce pain and inflammation, help in scar management resulting from burns, provide MJT protection, improve joint motion, and much more.
Many apparatuses and methods for supporting, treating, and rehabilitating hand and wrist injuries have developed significantly over the years. Traditionally, an injured area of the hand or wrist is placed in a plaster or fiberglass mold wherein the hand or arm is set in place. These are typically known as “rigid braces.” Casts are still utilized today, but they create many difficulties for a user. They are generally very time intensive to set-up, costly, difficult to remove, difficult to maintain, limited in configurations, and are generally uncomfortable for the user. Further, casts are difficult to maintain as they generally retain moisture from the showering or perspiration of the user. This moisture generates odors, which is undesirable for most users. Although there may be instances where rigid braces may be required to heal a bone fracture, they are still generally difficult to set-up, costly, and generally only support a specific injury on the hand or wrist.
Two other classes of braces include both soft and semi-rigid braces. Soft braces generally include a single piece of material that is shaped to conform to, or wrap around, the hand or wrist in order to generate pressure uniformly to all portions of the hand or wrist, rather than specifically focusing on the injured portion. Semi-rigid braces are generally a hybrid of soft and rigid braces, and typically include a single piece of material with straps and/or rigid splints to relieve pain, limit mobility of the effected area, and treat the specific injury. Those known soft and semi-rigid braces also suffer from many of the disadvantages described above for rigid braces. Specifically, those braces have limited functionality to relieve and treat pain for multiple injuries involving the hand and wrist.
For example, to treat sprains and perhaps even wrist fractures, some known soft and semi-rigid braces have straps (or gloves) that surround the wrist area of a user to substantially restrict movement. These braces restrict movement by applying significant amounts of pressure to the wrist. These braces would be inapplicable, and counter-productive, to treat a condition such as carpel tunnel syndrome, where immobilization of the wrist is required without the surface pressure that may irritate the median nerve. As such, those known braces are not capable of treating multiple conditions or injuries with a single brace. Consequently, hospitals or rehabilitation clinics, and individual users are required to purchase multiple braces dependent on the injury. This is extremely inconvenient and costly for those users and persons/entities involved in the medical community.
Furthermore, most soft or semi-rigid braces do not provide a user with the ability to simultaneously restrict movement of a MJT, but then allow that same brace to be configured (during the rehabilitation process) to progressively allow small increments of movement. Accordingly, these braces do not provide a single structure that allows a user to increase/reduce various degrees of motions, independently, such as: supination or pronation of the forearm, ulnar and radial deviation, and extension and flexion of the wrist. The inflexibility of a single brace to accommodate various injuries and different needs during rehabilitation process is problematic for many users.
Furthermore, to apply adequate support to the hand and wrist of a user, many hand and wrist braces require rigid material, i.e. splint, to be inserted within, or attached to, the brace. Besides contributing to the inflexibility of the brace to be configured to treat other injuries, these splints generally are more difficult to maintain, are more costly, and reduce the functionality of the brace should the splint mechanically fail. Moreover, many semi-rigid/rigid braces are also difficult to store and transport when not in use, as they are not able to be folded, or require time to disassemble, before transport. Similarly, many soft or semi-rigid braces that are formed into a glove-like structure are also difficult to transport, provide limited versatility in treating various injuries and conditions, and are difficult to comfortably accommodate users with various-sized wrists and hands.
Therefore, a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above.